May, 2007 Archive

Welcome to Change of Shift, a compilation of the best of the blogosphere by and about nurses!

The June 14th edition will mark the first anniversary of Change of Shift! This is a shout out to all nurse bloggers and all the doctor bloggers who work with them to send in your best posts by or about nursing for inclusion in this special edition.

Patient bloggers and even non-medical bloggers, that goes for you too! Have a special nurse that you want to tell us about? Send in your story!

As the daughter of a police officer, I have a soft spot for folks that wear the security uniform. As a nurse I have been the recipient of their protection many times. Our resident security officer Forgotten Blue Line describes a horrendous patient chase in A Bad Day. It could have been worse. Much worse.

Nursing scholarships get a boost from a nursing professor in a very unique way. Beth from Pixel RN passes along the details in Climbing for Nurses. This is totally cool! I’m making a donation – let’s help Dr. Hickey reach his goal!

Family nurse practitioner Teresa tackles a subject near and dear to my heart in Pajamas At Work, posted at “The Beast…”. What is going on with that strawberry photo? Somebody get the Center for Nursing Advocacy on the phone. I’m serious! (And thanks, Teresa, for a blog post idea!)

Former RN and current IT specialist Beastarzmom recounts a special pediatric patient in an unfathomable situation. Get your Kleenex ready as you read Horrifying, found at Easy Come, Easy Go. You’ll need it.

Given recent events, this post hit me harder than most. Sometimes we find our patients when we least expect it and our most dramatic encounters occur outside of the workplace. Monkeygirl recounts a chilling story of potential disaster in Car Wrecks, found on her blog Musings of a Highly Trained Monkey. I’d call her a Highly Trained Hero, myself…

The daily nursing columns over at Nursing Jobs. org have taken off in a big way! In addition to Terri, mentioned above, Labor Nurse is looking for posts discussing issues and difficulties faced by medical bloggers. Send your posts to her for inclusion in a special post dedicated to this online discussion. Details in her column Story Telling.

A survey that allows a patient to actually evaluate their nursing care based on what they consider important? I’m not delusional! Really! There is a tool in development to do exactly that! Read what the patients want in this week’s column on nursing research entitled Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want. (Hmmm…the Spice Girls. I guess I’d be “Blogger Spice”.)

Susan McNicholas remembers her early mentors in her “Penlight” column entitled My Titas and Ates. And yes, I had to do a double take at that title, too…

What this kid doesn’t know is that the cup contains Gastrografin for his upcoming CT!

And, he has to drink two more of them!

Check out the look on Dad’s face.

“Sure son, look at me! I’m going to have some, too! Yum!”

Looks like the nurse went to the Generic Hospital School For Nurses.

While I can appreciate the style of the cap, without a ribbon it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

Ooo la-la, that was French!

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I have been lax in my duties a blog neighbor. Sort of hit a wall a few days ago and couldn’t put two words together for the life of me! Two years (almost) of blogging has taught me that these dry spells are transient and now that the juices are flowing I want to share some things going on around the blogosphere!

My Nursing Jobs.org colleague and blogger, Labor Nurse will be holding a discussion regarding the issues in health care blogging and she would like to hear your thoughts. She said it best in her Nursing Jobs.org column “You’re Being (Web) Paged”:

I am inviting all health care bloggers to submit a post from their blog on the challenges they face in writing about their job. The recent events within the health care blogosphere resulting in the demise of several popular health care blogs has brought to light the issues we must consider. What are your thoughts? Should we as health care providers be blogging? What can we blog about, and where do we draw the line? Send your blog posts to me at labornurse@nursingjobs.org by Thursday, May 31st to be included in my next column.

I’ve submitted a post about non-anonymous blogging. Weigh in with your thoughts. It should be an interesting discussion.

About Me

My name is Kim, and I'm a nurse in the San Francisco Bay area. I've been a nurse for 33 years; I graduated in 1978 with my ADN. My experience is predominately Emergency and Critical Care, and I have also worked in Psychiatry and Pediatrics. I made the decision to be a nurse back in 1966 at the age of nine...